The United Nation's
Human Rights Council in Geneva reviews the human rights record of
the United States on November 5, 2010, on the occasion of the Ninth
Session of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), November 1 to 12, 2010.
The following is the presentation given by Dirk Adriaensens in the
"Special Information Session of Extra-territorial Abuses of Human Rights
by the United States" on November 3.

Just days after the devastating attacks of 9/11 Deputy Defense secretary
Paul Wolfowitz declared that a major focus of US foreign policy would be
“ending states that sponsor terrorism”. Iraq was labelled a
“terrorist state” and targeted for ending. President Bush went on to
declare Iraq the major front of the global war on terror. US forces
invaded illegally with the express aim to dismantling the Iraqi state.
After WWII focus of social sciences was on state-building and
development model. Little has been written on state-destruction and
de-development. We can now, after 7 years of war and occupation, state
for certain that state-ending was a deliberate policy objective.

The consequences in human and cultural terms of the destruction of the
Iraqi state have been enormous: notably the death of over 1,3 million
civilians; the degradation in social infrastructure, including
electricity, potable water and sewage systems; over
eight million Iraqis are in need of humanitarian assistance; abject
poverty: the UN Human rights report for the 1st quarter of
2007 found that 54% of Iraqis were living on less than $1 a day;
the displacement of minimum 2.5 million refugees and 2.764.000
internally displaced people as to end 2009.
One in six Iraqis is displaced.
Ethnic & religious minorities are on the verge of extinction.
UN-HABITAT, an agency of the United Nations, published a 218-page report
entitled State of the World’s Cities, 2010-2011. Prior to the U.S.
invasion of Iraq in 2003, the percentage of the urban population living
in slums in Iraq hovered just below 20 percent. Today, that percentage
has risen to 53 percent: 11 million of the 19 million total urban
dwellers.

Destroying Iraqi
education

The UNESCO report “Education Under
Attack 2010 – Iraq”, dated 10 February 2010, concludes that “Although overall security in Iraq had improved, the situation faced by
schools, students, teachers and academics remained dangerous”. The
director of the United Nations University International Leadership
Institute published a report on 27 April 2005 detailing that since the
start of the war of 2003 some 84% of Iraq's higher education
institutions have been burnt, looted or destroyed. Ongoing violence has
destroyed school buildings and around a quarter of all Iraq’s primary
schools need major rehabilitation. Since March 2003, more than 700
primary schools have been bombed, 200 have been burnt and over 3,000
looted. Populations of teachers in Baghdad have fallen by 80%. Between
March 2003 and October 2008, 31,598 violent attacks against educational
institutions were reported in Iraq, according to the Ministry of
Education (MoE). Since 2007 bombings at Al Mustansiriya University in
Baghdad have killed or maimed more than 335 students and staff members,
according to a 19 Oct 2009 NYT article, and a 12-foot-high blast wall
has been built around the campus. MNF-I, the Iraqi Army and Iraqi police
units occupied more than 70 school buildings for military purposes in
the Diyala governorate alone, in clear violation of The Hague
Conventions. The UNESCO report is very clear: “Attacks on education targets continued throughout 2007 and 2008 at a
lower rate – but one that would cause serious concern in any other
country.” Why didn’t it cause serious concern when it comes to Iraq?
And the attacks are on the rise again, an increase of 50%, as these
statistics show:

(On the 20th
of March 2008, Reporters Without Borders reported that hundreds of
journalists were forced into exile since the start of US-led invasion.)

Eliminating the
Iraqi middle class

Running parallel with the destruction of Iraq’s educational
infrastructure, this repression led to the mass forced displacement of
the bulk of Iraq’s educated middle class — the main engine of progress
and development in modern states. Iraq’s intellectual and technical
class has been subject to a systematic and ongoing campaign of
intimidation, abduction, extortion, random killings and targeted
assassinations. The decimation of professional ranks took place in the
context of a generalized assault on Iraq’s professional middle class,
including doctors, engineers, lawyers, judges as well as political and
religious leaders.
Roughly 40 percent of Iraq's middle class is believed to have fled by
the end of 2006. Few have returned. Up to 75 percent of Iraq's doctors,
pharmacists and nurses have left their jobs since the U.S.-led invasion
in 2003. More than half of those have emigrated.
Twenty thousand of Iraq’s 34,000 registered physicians left Iraq after
the U.S. invasion. As of April 2009, fewer than 2,000 returned, the same
as the number who were killed during the course of the war.

To this date, there has been no systematic investigation of this
phenomenon by the occupation authorities. Not a single arrest has been
reported in regard to this terrorization of the intellectuals. The
inclination to treat this systematic assault on Iraqi professionals as
somehow inconsequential is consistent with the occupation powers’ more
general role in the decapitation of Iraqi society.

Destroying the
Iraqi culture and erasing collective memory

All these terrible losses are compounded by unprecedented levels of
cultural devastation, attacks on national archives and monuments that
represent the historical identity of the Iraqi people. On America’s
watch we now know that thousands of cultural artefacts disappeared
during “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. These objects included no less that
15.000 invaluable Mesopotamian artefacts from the National Museum in
Baghdad, and many others from the 12.000 archaeological sites that the
occupation forces left unguarded. While the Museum was robbed of its
historical collection, the National Library that preserved the
continuity and pride of Iraqi history was deliberately destroyed.
Occupation authorities took no effective measures to protect important
cultural sites, despite warnings of international specialists. According
to a recent update on the number of stolen artefacts by Francis Deblauwe,
an expert archaeologist on Iraq, it appears that no less than 8.500
objects are still truly missing, in addition to 4.000 artefacts said to
be recovered abroad but not yet returned to Iraq. The smuggling and
trade of Iraqi antiquities has become one of the most profitable
businesses in contemporary Iraq.

The attitude of the US-led forces to this pillage has been, at best,
indifference and worse. The failure of the US to carry out its
responsibilities under international law to take positive and protective
actions was compounded by egregious direct actions taken that severely
damaged the Iraqi cultural heritage. Since the invasion in March 2003,
the US-led forces have transformed at least seven historical sites into
bases or camps for the military, including UR, one of the most ancient
cities of the world and birthplace of Abraham, including the mythical
Babylon where a US military camp has irreparably damaged the ancient
city.

Destroying the
Iraqi state

Rampant chaos and violence hamper efforts at reconstruction, leaving the
foundations of the Iraqi state in ruins. The majority of Western
journalists, academics and political figures have refused to recognise
the loss of life on such a massive scale and the cultural destruction
that accompanied it as the fully predictable consequences of American
occupation policy. The very idea is considered unthinkable, despite the
openness with which this objective was pursued.

It is time to think the unthinkable. The American-led assault on Iraq
forces us to consider the meaning and consequences of state-destruction
as a policy objective. The architects of the Iraq policy never made
explicit what deconstructing and reconstructing the Iraqi state would
entail; their actions, however, make the meaning clear. From those
actions in Iraq, a fairly precise definition of state-ending can be
read. The campaign to destroy the state of Iraq involved first the
removal and execution of the legal head of state Saddam Hussein and the
capture and expulsion of Baath figures. However, state destruction went
beyond regime change. It also entailed the purposeful dismantling of
major state institutions and the launching of a prolonged process of
political reshaping.

Bremer's 100 orders turned Iraq into a giant free-market paradise, but a
hellish nightmare for Iraqis. They colonized the country for capital -
pillage on the grandest scale. New economic laws instituted low taxes,
100% foreign investor ownership of Iraqi assets, the right to
expropriate all profits, unrestricted imports, and long-term 30-40 year
deals and leases, dispossessing Iraqis of their own resources.

This desecration of the past and undermining of contemporary social
gains is now giving way in occupied Iraq to the destruction of a
meaningful future. Iraq is being handed over to the disintegrative
forces of sectarianism and regionalism. Iraqis, stripped of their shared
heritage and living today in the ruins of contemporary social
institutions that sustained a coherent and unified society, are now
bombarded by the forces of civil war, social and religious atavism and
widespread criminality. Iraqi nationalism that had emerged through a
prolonged process of state-building and social interaction is now
routinely disparaged. The regime installed by occupation forces in Iraq
reshaped the country along divisive sectarian lines, dissolving the
hard-won unity of a long state-building project. Dominant narratives now
falsely claim that sectarianism and ethnic chauvinism have always been
the basis of Iraqi society, recycling yet again the persistent and
destructive myth of age-old conflicts with no resolution and for which
the conquerors bear no responsibility. Contemporary Iraq represents a
fragmented pastiche of sectarian forces with the formal trappings of
liberal democracy and neo-liberal economic structures. We call this the
divide and rule technique, used to fracture and subdue culturally
cohesive regions. This reshaping of the Iraqi state resulted in a policy
of ethnic cleansing, partially revealed by the Wikileaks files.

The Wikileaks
documents

The Wikileaks documents, first made public on 22 October 2010, show how
the US military gave a secret order not to investigate torture by Iraqi
authorities discovered by American troops.

The data also reveal how hundreds of civilians were killed by coalition
forces in unreported events, how hundreds of Iraqi civilians: pregnant
women, elderly people and children, were shot at checkpoints.

There are numerous claims of prison abuse by coalition forces even after
the Abu Ghraib scandal. The files also paint a grim picture of
widespread torture in Iraqi detention facilities. Two revelations await
the reader of the Wikileaks section dealing with civilian deaths in the
Iraq War: Iraqis are responsible for most of these deaths, and the
number of total civilian casualties is substantially higher than has
been previously reported.

The documents record a descent into chaos and horror as the country
plunged into so-called “civil war”. The logs also record thousands of
bodies, many brutally tortured, dumped on the streets of Iraq.

Through the Wikileaks files we can see the impact the war had on Iraqi
men, women and children. The sheer scale of the deaths, detentions and
violence is here officially acknowledged for the first time.

A thorough research of these documents will give us a further insight
into the atrocities committed in Iraq. The Wikileaks logs can serve as
evidence in courts. They are important material for lawyers to file
charges against the US for negligence and responsibility for the killing
of thousands. A fair compensation for the families of the victims and
the recognition of their suffering can help to heal the wounds. In the
first official US State Department response to the massive WikiLeaks
release of these classified Iraq War documents, spokesman P.J. Crowley
shrugged off the evidence that US troops were ordered to cover up
detainee abuse by the Iraqi government, insisting the abuse wasn’t
America’s problem. This response is infuriating. The perpetrators of
this violence and those who ordered the soldiers to turn a blind eye
when being confronted with torture and extra-judicial killings should be
convicted for war crimes. The US and UK forces and Governments clearly
refused to fulfil their obligations under international law as a de
facto occupying power.

However, these logs reveal only the 'SIGACT's or Significant Actions in
the war “as told by soldiers in
the United States Army”: the reports of the “regular” US troops. The
logs contain nothing new, they merely confirm and officialize what the
Iraqis and un-embedded Western observers have been trying to convey to
the public for years. While all of the press is now reporting the
Wikileaks story, few media outlets are going back to their own coverage
and acknowledging how they have failed to honestly report about the
crimes.

What these 400.000 documents do not reveal is the US involvement of
“irregular troops” in Special Operations, counter-insurgency war and
death squads activities. When will the documents of the “dirty war” be
revealed? The BRussells
Tribunal, monitoring this horrendous invasion and occupation since 2003,
is convinced that the leaked logs only scratch the surface of the
catastrophic war in Iraq. What we can extract from the Wikileaks
documents is only the tip of the iceberg. It is time to take a dive into
the troubled waters of the Iraq war and try to explore the hidden part
of the iceberg.

Ethnic cleansing

It became clear after the invasion in 2003 that the Iraqi exile groups
were to play an important role in the violent response to dissent in
occupied Iraq. Already on January 1st 2004, it was reported
that the US government planned to create paramilitary units comprised of
militiamen from Iraqi Kurdish and exile groups including the Badr
brigades, the Iraqi National Congress and the Iraqi National Accord to
wage a campaign of terror and extra-judicial killing, similar to the
Phoenix program in Vietnam: the terror and assassination campaign that
killed tens of thousands of civilians.

The $87 billion supplemental appropriation for the war in November 2003
included $3 billion for a classified program, funds that would be used
for the paramilitaries for the next 3 years. Over that period, the news
from Iraq gradually came to be dominated by reports of death squads and
ethnic cleansing, described in the press as “sectarian
violence” that was used as the new central narrative of the war and
the principal justification for continued occupation. Some of the
violence may have been spontaneous, but there is overwhelming evidence
that most of it was the result of the plans described by several
American experts in December 2003.

Despite subsequent American efforts to distance US policy from the
horrific results of this campaign, it was launched with the full support
of conservative opinion-makers in the USA, even declaring that “The Kurds and the INC have excellent intelligence operations that we
should allow them to exploit… especially to conduct counterinsurgency in
the Sunny Triangle” as a Wall
Street Journal editorial stated.

The Salvador Option

In January 2005, more than a year after the first reports about the
Pentagon’s planning for assassinations and paramilitary operations
emerged, the “Salvador Option”
hit the pages of Newsweek and other major news-outlets. The outsourcing
of state terrorism to local proxy forces was regarded as a key component
of a policy that had succeeded in preventing the total defeat of the
US-backed government in El Salvador. Pentagon-hired mercenaries, like
Dyncorp, helped form the sectarian militias that were used to terrorize
and kill Iraqis and to provoke Iraq into civil war.

In 2004 two senior US Army officers published a favourable review of the
American proxy war in Colombia: “Presidents
Reagan and Bush supported a small, limited war while trying to keep US
military involvement a secret from the American public and media.
Present US policy toward Colombia appears to follow this same
disguised, quiet, media-free approach.”

It reveals the fundamental nature of “dirty war”, like in Latin America
and the worst excesses of the Vietnam War. The purpose of dirty war is
not to identify and then detain or kill actual resistance fighters. The
target of dirty war is the civilian population. It is a strategy of
state terrorism and collective punishment against an entire population
with the objective to terrorizing it into submission. The same tactics
used in Central America and Colombia were exported to Iraq. Even the
architects of these dirty wars in El Salvador (Ambassador John
Negroponte and James Steele) and in Colombia (Steven Casteel) were
transferred to Iraq to do the same dirty work. They recruited, trained
and deployed the notorious “Special
Police Commandos”, in which later, in 2006, death squads like
the Badr Brigades and other militias were incorporated. US forces set up
a high-tech operations centre for the Special Police Commandos at an “undisclosed
location” in Iraq. American technicians installed satellite
telephones and computers with uplinks to the Internet and US forces
Networks. The command centre had direct connections to the Iraqi
Interior Ministry and to every US forward operating base in the country.

As news of atrocities by these forces in Iraq hit the newsstands in
2005, Casteel would play a critical role in blaming extrajudicial
killings on “insurgents” with
stolen police uniforms, vehicles and weapons. He also claimed that
torture centres were run by rogue elements of the Interior Ministry,
even as accounts came to light of torture taking place inside the
ministry headquarters where he and other Americans worked. US advisers
to the Interior Ministry had their offices on the 8th floor,
directly above a jail on the 7th floor where torture was
taking place.

The uncritical attitude of the Western media to American officials like
Steven Casteel prevented a worldwide popular and diplomatic outcry over
the massive escalation of the dirty war in Iraq in 2005 and 2006,
consistent with the “disguised,
quiet, media-free approach” mentioned before. As the
Newsweek story broke in
January 2005, General Downing, the former head of US Special Forces,
appeared on NBC. He said: “This is
under control of the US forces, of the current Interim Iraqi government.
There’s no need to think that we’re going to have any kind of killing
campaign that’s going to maim innocent civilians.” Within months,
Iraq was swept by exactly that kind of a killing campaign. This campaign
has led to arbitrary detention, torture, extra-judicial executions and
the mass exodus and internal displacement of millions. Thousands of
Iraqis disappeared during the worst days of this dirty war between 2005
and 2007. Some were seen picked up by uniformed militias and piled into
lorries, others simply seemed to vanish. Iraq’s minister of human rights
Wijdan Mikhail said that her ministry had received more than 9,000
complaints in 2005 and 2006 alone from Iraqis who said a relative had
disappeared. Human rights groups put the total number much higher. The
fate of many missing Iraqis remains unknown. Many are languishing in one
of Iraq's notoriously secretive prisons.

Journalist Dr. Yasser Salihee was killed on June 24th 2005 by
an American sniper, so-called “accidentally”. Three days after his death
Knight Ridder published a report on his investigation into the Special
Police Commandos and their links to torture, extra-judicial killings and
disappearances in Baghdad. Salihee and his colleagues investigated at
least 30 separate cases of abductions leading to torture and death. In
every case witnesses gave consistent accounts of raids by large numbers
of police commandos in uniform, in clearly marked police vehicles, with
police weapons and bullet-proof vests. And in every case the detained
were later found dead, with almost identical signs of torture and they
were usually killed by a single gunshot to the head.

The effect of simply not pointing out the connection between the US and
the Iranian-backed Badr Brigade militia, the US-backed Wolf Brigade and
other Special Police Commando units, or the extent of American
recruitment, training, command, and control of these units, was
far-reaching. It distorted perceptions of events in Iraq throughout the
ensuing escalation of the war, creating the impression of senseless
violence initiated by the Iraqis themselves and concealing the American
hand in the planning and execution of the most savage forms of violence.
By providing cover for the crimes committed by the US government, news
editors played a significant role in avoiding the public outrage that
might have discouraged the further escalation of this campaign.

The precise extent of US complicity in different aspects and phases of
death squad operations, torture and disappearances, deserves thorough
investigation. It is not credible that American officials were simply
innocent bystanders to thousands of these incidents. As frequently
pointed out by Iraqi observers, Interior Ministry death squads moved
unhindered through American as well as Iraqi checkpoints as they
detained, tortured and killed thousands of people.

As in other countries where US forces have engaged in what they refer to
as “counter-insurgency”, American military and intelligence officials
recruited, trained, equipped and directed local forces which engaged in
a campaign of state-sponsored terror against the overwhelming proportion
of the local population who continued to reject and oppose the invasion
and occupation of their country.

The degree of US initiative in the recruitment, training, equipping,
deployment, command and control of the Special Police Commandos made it
clear that American trainers and commanders established the parameters
within which these forces operated. Many Iraqis and Iranians were
certainly guilty of terrible crimes in the conduct of this campaign. But
the prime responsibility for this policy, and for the crimes it
involved, rests with the individuals in the civilian and military
command structure of the US Department of Defense, the CIA and the White
House who devised, approved and implemented the “Phoenix” or “Salvador”
terror policy in Iraq.

The report of the Human Rights Office of UNAMI, issued on September 8th
2005, written by John Pace was very explicit, linking the campaign of
detentions, torture and extra-judicial executions directly to the
Interior Ministry and indirectly to the US-led Multi-National Forces.

The final UN Human Rights Report of 2006 described the consequences of
these policies for the people of Baghdad, while downplaying their
institutional roots in American policy. The “sectarian
violence” that engulfed Iraq in 2006 was not an unintended
consequence of the US invasion and occupation but an integral part of
it. The United States did not just fail to restore stability and
security to Iraq. It deliberately undermined them in a desperate effort
to “divide and rule” the
country and to fabricate new justifications for unlimited violence
against Iraqis who continued to reject the illegal invasion and
occupation of their country.

The nature and extent of involvement of different individuals and groups
within the US occupation structure has remained a dirty, dark secret,
but there are many leads that could be followed by any serious inquiry.

The Surge

In January 2007, the US government announced a new strategy, the “surge”
of US combat troops in Baghdad and Al-Anbar province. Most Iraqis
reported that this escalation of violence made living conditions even
worse than before, as its effects were added to the accumulated
devastation of 4 years of war and occupation. The UN Human Rights report
for the 1st quarter of 2007 gave a description of the dire
conditions of the Iraqi people. The violence of the “surge” resulted
i.e. in a further 22% reduction of the number of doctors, leaving only
15.500 out of an original 34.000 by September 2008. The number of
refugees and internally displaced has risen sharply during the period
2007-2008.

Since Interior Ministry forces under US command were responsible for a
large part of the extra-judicial killings, the occupation authorities
had the power to reduce or increase the scale of these atrocities more
or less on command. So a reduction in the killings with the launch of
the “security plan” should not have been difficult to achieve. In fact,
a small reduction in violence seems to have served an important
propaganda role for a period until the death squads got back to work,
supported by the new American offensive.

The escalation of American firepower in 2007, including a five-fold
increase in air strikes and the use of Spectre gun-ships and artillery
in addition to the “surge” was intended as a devastating climax to the
past 4 years of war and collective punishment inflicted upon the Iraqi
people. All resistance-held areas would be targeted with overwhelming
fire-power, mainly from the air, until the US ground forces could build
walls around what remained of each neighbourhood and isolate each
district. It’s worth mentioning that General Petraeus compared the
hostilities in Ramadi with the Battle of Stalingrad without qualms about
adopting the role of the German invaders in this analogy. Ramadi was
completely destroyed as was Fallujah in November 2004.

The UN Human Rights reports of 2007 mentioned the indiscriminate and
illegal attacks against civilians and civilian areas and asked for
investigations. Air strikes continued on an almost daily basis until
August 2008 even as the so-called “sectarian
violence” and US casualties declined. In all the reported incidents
where civilians, women and children were killed, Centcom press office
declared that the people killed were “terrorists”, “Al Qaeda militants”
or “involuntary human shields”. Of course, when military forces are
illegally ordered to attack civilian areas, many people will try to
defend themselves, especially if they know that the failure to do so may
result in arbitrary detention, abuse, torture, or summary execution for
themselves or their relatives.

Forces
involved in “Special Operations”:

Another aspect of the “surge” or escalation appears to have been an
increase in the use of the American Special Forces assassination teams.
In april 2008 i.e. President Bush declared: ”As
we speak, US Special Forces are launching multiple operations every
night to capture or kill Al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq”. The NYT reported
on 13 May 2009: “When General
Stanley McChrystal took over the Joint Special Operations Command in
2003, he inherited an insular, shadowy commando force with a reputation
for spurning partnerships with other military and intelligence
organizations. But over the next five years he worked hard, his
colleagues say, to build close relationships with the C.I.A. and the
F.B.I. (…) In Iraq, where he oversaw secret commando operations for five
years, former intelligence officials say that he had an encyclopaedic,
even obsessive, knowledge about the lives of terrorists, and that he
pushed his ranks aggressively to kill as many of them as possible. (…)
Most of what General McChrystal has done over a 33-year career remains
classified, including service between 2003 and 2008 as commander of the
Joint Special Operations Command, an elite unit so clandestine that the
Pentagon for years refused to acknowledge its existence.” The
secrecy surrounding these operations prevented more widespread
reporting, but as with earlier US covert operations in Vietnam and Latin
America, we will learn more about these operations over time.

-
An
article in the Sunday Telegraph
in February 2007 pointed towards clear evidence British Special
Forces recruited and trained terrorists in the Green Zone to heighten
ethnic tensions. An elite SAS wing, called “Task Force Black”,
with bloody past in Northern Ireland operates with immunity and provides
advanced explosives. Some attacks are being blamed on Iranians, Sunni
insurgents or shadowy terrorist cells such as Al Qaeda.

- the SWAT teams (Special Weapons and Tactics), extensively used
in counter-insurgency operations. The mission of SWAT is to conduct
high-risk operations that fall outside the abilities of regular patrol
officers to prevent, deter and respond to terrorism and insurgent
activities. It was reported that “The
foreign internal defense partnership with Coalition Soldiers establishes
a professional relationship between the Iraqi Security and Coalition
forces where the training builds capable forces. Coalition soldiers
working side-by-side with the SWAT teams, both in training and on
missions.” On 7 October 2010 the Official website of US Forces in
Iraq reported that “The Basrah
SWAT team has trained with various Special Forces units, including the
Navy SEALs and the British SAS. The 1st Bn., 68th Arm. Regt., currently
under the operational control of United States Division-South and the
1st Infantry Division, has taken up the task of teaching the SWAT team.”

- the Facilities Protection Services, where the “private
contractors” or mercenaries, like Blackwater, are incorporated, are also
used in counter-insurgency operations.

- the Iraq Special Operations Forces (ISOF), probably the largest
special forces outfit ever built by the United States, free of many of
the controls that most governments employ to rein in such lethal forces.
The project started in Jordan just after the Americans conquered Baghdad
in April 2003, to create a deadly, elite, covert unit, fully fitted with
American equipment, which would operate for years under US command and
be unaccountable to Iraqi ministries and the normal political process.
According to Congressional records, the ISOF has grown into nine
battalions, which extend to four regional "commando bases" across Iraq.
By December 2009 they were fully operational, each with its own
"intelligence infusion cell," which will operate independently of Iraq's
other intelligence networks. The ISOF is at least 4,564 operatives
strong, making it approximately the size of the US Army's own Special
Forces in Iraq. Congressional records indicate that there are plans to
double the ISOF over the next "several years."

Conclusion: the “dirty war” in
Iraq continues. Even as President Barack Obama was announcing the end of
combat in Iraq, U.S. forces were still in fight alongside their Iraqi
colleagues. The tasks of the 50,000 remaining US troops, 5,800 of them
airmen, are “advising" and training the Iraqi army, "providing security" and carrying
out "counter-terrorism" missions.

According to the UN Human Rights report, upon a request for
clarification by UNAMI, the MNF confirmed that “the
US government continued to regard the conflict in Iraq as an
international armed conflict, with procedures currently in force
consistent with the 4th Geneva Convention” and not that
the civil rights of Iraqis should be governed by the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and other human rights laws,
because this would have strengthened the rights of Iraqis detained by US
or Iraqi forces to speedy and fair trials. The admission that the US was
still legally engaged in an “international
armed conflict” against Iraq at the end of 2007 also raises serious
questions regarding the legality of constitutional and political changes
made in Iraq by the occupation forces and their installed government
during the war and occupation.

Legitimizing
torture

When the public revelations of abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib prison
created a brief furor in the world, the ICRC, Human Rights First, AI,
HRW and other Human Rights groups documented far more widespread and
systematic crimes committed by US forces against people they
extra-judicially detained in Iraq. In numerous human rights reports they
established that command responsibility for these crimes extended to the
highest levels of the US government and its armed forces.

The forms of torture documented in these reports included death threats,
mock executions, water-boarding, stress positions, including
excruciating and sometimes deadly forms of hanging, hypothermia, sleep
deprivation, starvation and thirst, withholding medical treatment,
electric shocks, various forms of rape and sodomy, endless beatings,
burning, cutting with knives, injurious use of flexicuffs, suffocation,
sensory assault and/or deprivation and more psychological forms of
torture such as sexual humiliation and the detention and torture of
family members. The ICRC established that the violations of
international humanitarian law that it recorded were systematic and
widespread. Military officers told the ICRC that “between
70% and 90% of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been
arrested by mistake”.

All these facts are well known, but only the lower ranks in the Army
were mildly punished. The “Command’s Responsibility” report revealed
that the failure to charge higher ranking officers was the direct result
of the “key role” that some same officers played “in undermining chances
for full accountability”. By delaying and undermining investigations of
deaths in their custody, senior officers compounded their own criminal
responsibility in a common pattern of torture, murder and obstruction of
justice. Senior officers abused the enormous power they wield in the
military command structure to place themselves beyond the reach of law,
even as they gave orders to commit terrible crimes. It was in
recognition of the terrible potential for exactly this type of criminal
behaviour that the Geneva Conventions were drafted and signed in the
first place, and that is why they are just as vital today.

Nevertheless, the responsibility for these crimes is not limited to the
US army. The public record also includes documents in which senior
civilian officials of the US government approved violations of the
Geneva Conventions, the 1994 Convention against Torture and the 1996 US
War Crimes act. The United States government should thus be held
accountable for this terrible tragedy it inflicted upon millions of
Iraqi citizens and should be forced to pay appropriate compensations to
the victims of its criminal policy in Iraq.

RECOMMENDATIONS

We learned that on Tuesday the 26th of October the United
Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay urged Iraq and
the United States to investigate allegations of torture and unlawful
killings in the Iraq conflict revealed in the Wikileaks documents. We
are very surprised by this statement. Does the High Commissioner think
it is appropriate for criminals to investigate their own crimes?
Wijdan Mikhail, the Iraqi Minister of Human Rights in Iraq has called
for putting Julian Assange on trial instead of investigating the crimes.
And since the Obama administration has shown no desire to expose any of
the crimes committed by US officials in Iraq, an international
investigation under the auspices of the High Commissioner of Human
Rights is necessary. Different Special Rapporteurs should be involved:
i.e. the
Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions,
the Special Rapporteur on the
promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism
and the Special Rapporteur on
torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
A Special Rapporteur on the
situation of human rights in Iraq should be urgently appointed.

Although the U.N. did not authorize the invasion of Iraq, it did “legalize”
the occupation a posteriori in UNSC resolution 1483 (22 May 2003),
against the will of the overwhelming majority of the world community,
that didn’t accept the legality or the legitimacy of that UN resolution.
And it was during the occupation that the war crimes brought to light by
WikiLeaks took place. As should the U.S., the U.N. has the moral and
legal duty to respond.

The world community has the right to know the complete and unbiased
truth about the extent and responsibilities of American involvement in
Iraq’s Killing Fields and demands justice for the Iraqi people.

We appeal to all states to ask the US about all these crimes against the
Iraqi people during the UPR on the 5th of November.

We also demand that procedures be set up to compensate the Iraqi people
and Iraq as a nation for all the losses, human and material destruction
and damages caused by the illegal war and the occupation of the country
lead by the US/UK forces.

Dirk Adriaensens

,

Member of the BRussells
Tribunal Executive Committee

Note:
this presentation contains information available in the public domain,
it is compiled of several official reports, press articles, BRussells
Tribunal witness accounts, Max
Fuller’s articles on the counter-insurgency war (http://www.brussellstribunal.org/FullerKillings.htm)
and two books:

An
organization of Ghent University, Middle East and North Africa Research
Group, MENARG &The BRussells
Tribunal in cooperation withIACIS,
International Association of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, Vrede,
11.11.11& IAON, International
Anti-occupation Network

and with the support ofICMES,
International Council for Middle East Studies and
EURAMES, European

DAHR JAMAIL, Independent Journalist/Author:Through the Ghent Seminar,
the BRussells Tribunal will lay the groundwork upon which real cases for
war crimes committed by the U.S. government in Iraq can be built

Dr. Basim Al-Janabi is professor Political science at Baghdad
University. He gained his doctorate after the occupation and nearly
missed his defence of thesis due to being in detention. He left Iraq in
2006 and lives in Amman, keeping close contacts with his colleagues. He
is working on a proposal for teacher training with colleague at college
of education at Baghdad University.

Count
Hans-Christof von Sponeck, a former UN assistant secretary general,
joined the UN Development Program in 1968 and worked in Ghana, Turkey,
Botswana, Pakistan and India, before becoming Director of European
Affairs in Geneva. He was appointed the UN humanitarian coordinator for
Iraq in October 1998. Count Sponeck resigned from this position in
February 2000 in protest of international policy towards Iraq. He
teaches at the University of Marburg and serves in a range of NGO boards
in Canada, Switzerland, Sweden, Germany and Italy. Author of the book A
Different Kind of War: The UN Sanctions Regime in Iraq, Berghahn Books,
Providence, 2006.

For
all the misinformation and outright lies of the Bush administration,
that infamous “mission accomplished” banner contained a terrible truth:the American-led invasion of Iraq aimed to destroy the Iraqi
state, and the Iraqi state -- and so much more -- was indeed destroyed.In the wake of the invasion museums were looted, libraries
burned, and academics murdered, all part of undermining the cultural
foundations of the modern Iraqi state, all part of a deliberate policy
of “state-ending”.Mission
accomplished.Iraq was
destroyed at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives lost, the
displacement of millions, and the destruction of one of the world’s
great cultural centers.

Historians who write the history of our time will surely rank the
American destruction of Iraq as one of the great crimes of the early
21st century.It is
disconcerting, therefore, that the full measure of the devastating
consequences of that criminal invasion and occupation has yet to
register.

Why
has it been so hard to come to terms with the consequences of the
calculated destruction of Iraq?When the mind numbs, it is important to understand why.I would like to suggest four explanations:

First, the Western rhetoric of a War on Terror, by rationalizing the
depredations of empire, fosters a public will to ignorance:protect us from the evil doers but don’t tell us what’s happening
over there in strange places;

Secondly, the sheer magnitude of the deliberately imposed human misery,
the scope of the cultural destruction, and terrible scale of the killing
makes what happened to Iraq and Iraqis literally unimaginable;

Thirdly, despite our 21st century awareness of what Hannah
Arendt famously identified as ”the banality of evil”, it is almost
impossible to conceive of the planning and execution of such destruction
and killing in any manner other than as a massive conspiracy – Iran,
sectarian death squads, CIA, Mossad --rather than as a declared and openly pursued foreign policy
objective;

Fourthly, the intoxication of mainstream Western social sciences with
their developmental and liberationistillusions of empire has made systematic social scientific inquiry
into an international crime of this magnitude-- the calculated destruction of a functioning state and the
degradation of its cultural and human foundations -- all but impossible.

There
is something blinding about destruction on so terrible a scale,
something just too painful about debating methods for calculating the
number of slaughtered innocents when the figures almost immediately take
us into the hundreds of thousands of human souls.The mind closes down, or so it seems.That may be one of God’s mercies but it is one that must be
resisted.

- Raymond Baker

Raymond William Baker

Professor of International Politics at Trinity College USA and American
University Cairo, past president of the International Association of
Middle Eastern Studies, governing board member of the World Congress of
Middle East Studies. Founding member of International Association of
Contemporary Iraqi Studies USA / Egypt

LE COMITE SCIENTIFIQUE DU
SEMINAIRE DE GANDRUDDY DOOM,
Professor Ghent University
PATRICK DEBOOSERE,
Professor Brussels University
SAAD JAWAD,
Professor and pas president of Iraq's professors association
FRANCOIS HOUTART,
former senior advisor to the President of the United Nations General Assembly
SOUAD AL-AZZAWI,
former Professor at Baghdad University
TAREQ ISMAEL,
Professor at Calgari University
DENIS HALLIDAY,
former humanitarian coordinator in Iraq
ZUHAIR AL SHAROOK,
former President of Mosul UniversityIMAD KHADDURI,
former member of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission
OMAR K.H.AL-KUBAISSI,
Head of Postgraduate Department at Ibn Al Bitar Hospital
Baghdad
JEAN BRICMONT,
Professor at the Université catholique de LouvainCYNTHIA MCKINNEY, former member of the US House of
RepresentativesMOHAMMED AREF,
former advisor to Arab Science & Technology FoundationHANS-CHRISTOF VON SPONECK,
former humanitarian coordinator in Iraq

-
The BT is courageously leading this initiative at a moment in which the
trend in the corporate media and among politicians is to try to convince
society in general that conditions are improving in Iraq. Nothing could
be further from reality. Not only are militias continuing to kill Iraqi
academics but also the Educational System has collapsed and Universities
is one of the power sectors that has been divided on sectarian bases by
the occupation and their partnerships.

-The Ghent Seminar should serve to reveal the truth about the Minister
of Higher Education, who in an immoral and irresponsible way has been
calling upon Iraqi academics in exile to return to Iraq
when the result of their coming home is their death, as we have seen in
last two examples.
The
saddest reality is that the Iraqi academics assassins have still total
impunity and at the same time, according to our information, sectarian
militias keep the Iraqi universities control.

CEOSI also likes to encourage other organizations to work together to
save the lives of Iraqi academics, who are still in great danger, and to
rebuild the educational system on a non-sectarian basis, taking into
account that,

-It is a deathtrap to think that the situation in Iraq has improved,
hence the importance of this courageous initiative.

- To help Iraqi Academia it is essential, first and foremost, to analyze
in depth the present-day situation of Iraqis Higher Education, as it was
stated by UNESCO
(185
EX/35,
August 30, 2010).

- CEOSI thinks the Ghent seminar is a great opportunity to share
campaigns and projects to work together. We will present our lasts field
of work project: A dossier in cooperation with the University of Sussex
to produce a baseline report on the actual situation of Iraqi Higher
Education. Besides, we have created a new blog (http://iraqiacademicsunderattack.wordpress.com/
), an open meeting point to contact and discuss on this issue with Iraqi
academics and all the organizations involved in this field.

For all these reasons we fully support this initiative of paramount
importance to expose the real situation of Iraqi Academia.